In 1983, MGM released the movie WarGames and changed my life forever. The film transformed my casual interest in computers into an obsession and actually motivated me to learn programming. So when I heard that MGM Interactive was making a game based on the movie, I was pretty psyched. After a few weeks with WarGames, however, I was pretty disappointed. This game has a nice 3D graphics engine but adds nothing else of substance to the very familiar RTS formula.

The bottom line here is that WarGames had potential but didn’t do enough with it. There were several things that really kept me from fully enjoying this title, including problems with the graphics, an average interface, and some awfully sluggish gameplay. The concept wasn’t bad and some of the components of the game were nice. It just seemed like WarGames was too rough around the edges and the gameplay wasn’t substantial enough to hold my attention. The basic elements of RTS weren’t different enough from anything else I’ve played recently to stand out. Things just got a little old too quickly and weren’t exciting enough to be much fun.

WarGamers is a competent strategy game, but it simply can't hang with the stars of the genre (like Myth and Total Annihilation), which offer far superior gameplay and better options. This WOPR's whipped.

Sadly, WARGAMES’ most exceptional feature is its movement Al. which is easily the worst I’ve seen in years. Your troops literally cannot find their way out of their own bases. Units constantly get stuck behind each other when there’s plenty of room to go around. Tell them to attack an enemy and they stop dead. Tell them to jump on a transport and they turn around and Flee the area, I once saw three tanks milling around endlessly, completely stymied by a single enemy infantry unit whom they were unable either to run over or find their way around. If you could set waypoints, a lot of the frustration could be avoided, but the designers evidently thought this simple solution was unnecessary.
Ultimately, although WARGAMES offers some things we haven’t seen before, it’s still not half the game that either STARCRAFT or TOTAL ANNIHILATION is. How about a nice game of chess?